The Rag, The Wire And The Big Store

by Duane Lindsay

Chapter Three

  IT’S ALL FUN AND GAMES UNTIL SOMEBODY’S MARRIED

  Omaha, Nebraska, May, 1953

  Leroy in the crappy green tin shower singing “It’s a Barnum and Bailey World! Just a phony as it can beeeeee…” while Kate, in a full white slip, combs tangles from the back of her hair. On the queen-size bed, the rumpled remains of last night – punched in pillows, white china plates on the floor from Benny’s Take Out Deli, a couple of greasy fries with blood red ketchup, cigarette butts standing like grave markers.

  The Nebraska sky, fat with rain clouds, casts dim shadows and Kate turns on the overhead light. She smiles, gap-toothed, at the sound of his singing, which is good because he shows no sign of stopping.

  Neither does the rain, which has been steadily falling for three days, making the air feel like soup and the roads impassable with thick brown mud. The rain is the reason for Leroy’s unabashed good humor.

  He sings, ‘But it wouldn’t be make believe if you believe in me,’ steps naked out of the shower and wraps a small white towel around skinny hips. He grabs her shoulder, spins her into a ballroom position as she shrieks, “Logan!” and he tangos them cheek to cheek into the motel living room/bedroom where he stubs his toe and loses the towel. He hops away cursing as Kate dissolves into laughter.

  Later, dressed, they make a quick dash to a long blue Olds 88 that sits dripping water from a grinning metal grill, looking like a giant bulldog that’s just eaten a mailman; soggy, but satisfied. Leroy driving, fingers tapping the huge plastic wheel in a spasm of restless energy, bopping to the music on KVOW, the voice of the Midwest. Kate’s loving the moment, taking in the high emotions of Leroy Logan at the top of his game, grinning like a kid at Christmas as they talk about the scam.

  “This one’s the best yet.”

  “Guy’s a natural victim. It’s like he’s begging us to take him.”

  “Then we’d be fools not to, wouldn’t we?”

  He squeezes her knee and swerves around a Sunday driver doing thirty in the rain.

  They park at a greasy spoon near the race track, a hangout for jockeys, trainers, stable hands and, at the moment, Jim-Bob Binford, maybe the best pickpocket in America.

  He’s sipping coffee from a white mug, studying the menu as if it might have changed from the last three weeks they’ve eaten here as Leroy and Kate park themselves in the booth. The place is all Formica and steel tables with pine walls, as cozy as a bus depot.

  Jim-Bob takes a few minutes to debate the virtues of the meat loaf over the pork chops, voicing his opinion in a Tennessee drawl thicker than the gravy that covers the chicken-fried steak he finally settles on. Leroy digs into a sirloin while Kate, still grinning, wolfs down a cheeseburger. It’s been a strenuous afternoon and she glows like a candle in a cave.

  Jim-Bob polishes off his succotash, shoving it and gravy and the last of his dinner roll into his mouth, they order pie and vanilla ice cream and Leroy lights smokes for Kate and himself and everybody smiles as they contemplate – at last! – the running of a particularly good long con.

  Jim-Bob says, “It’s about friggin’ time, innit?” Referring to the long weeks they’ve been waiting for the rain to come and stay, time spent fretting, seeing the limited sites of Omaha and playing cards. Jim-Bob’s out better than ninety bucks and he figures – correctly – that Leroy’s been cheating, but he can’t figure out how.

  Just last night he says to Snowy Deuce, “Leroy’s cheatin’, but I can’t figger how,” and Snowy, always upbeat, says back, “A course he’s cheatin’; be glad he’s only playin’ penny-ante or we’d be out our whole entire cut.” Snowy Deuce is a California boy born and raised, but he takes on the accent of whoever’s talking. Right now he sounds like a Tennessee possum.

  Jim-Bob stands less than five-two, weighs only a hundred, hundred-five soaking wet, which is now, since it’s raining. He makes his legitimate stake as a jockey, riding nags in local races, winning when he can, dipping wallets when the horses aren’t running.

  “We’re going to play it tomorrow at dawn,” says Leroy, little more than a shadow in the smoky room. The diner is full and everybody’s lit up something, so it’s like being in the boiler room of the Titanic just before the iceberg. The clunky yellow glass ashtray is full to overflowing with butts, Pall-Mall (Leroy), filtered (Jim-Bob, because he’s watching his health) and red (Kate’s new lipstick is Maybelline Tropical Sunset.)

  “You got it?”

  “Sure.” Jim-Bob reaches into a damp wool vest to retrieve a shiny silver stopwatch on a short chain. He hands it to Kate who snaps it open and reads the inscription. To Maurice, Love Sharon. The face of the watch is engraved with intricate flowers and thorny vines that caused the forger Jerry Dix to cluck with annoyance and double his price.

  Worth it, thinks Leroy, admiring the piece over Kate’s shoulder. “It works?”

  “Three point four seconds slow every time,” says Jim-Bob.

  Kate’s fingers caress the delicate object. “Like taking candy,” she says. “Logan; how’d you even think of such a thing?”

  Leroy beams, justifiably proud; this might be the best con he’s ever planned.

  Friday morning, dressed in overcoats and sweaters, fedoras pulled tight against the cold wind and slicing rain, Leroy and Jim-Bob hunched along the rails of the training track at Sullivan’s Stables. Nearby is an emaciated old man who doesn’t look like he can last long in this weather. Kate has, predictably, declined to rise at dawn to watch, “some damn horse run around.” Kate is not a morning person.

  But Maurice Sendinger is. He’s a geezer in a heavy wool greatcoat that adds thirty pounds to his skinny frame, dragging him down with the weight of the water. His head, under his snap-brim hat, is covered with wispy threads of hair and brown liver spots. His nose is large and crooked and he glares out at the world through enormous black framed glasses. His teeth look like dried up old cheese.

  Let’s get on with this,” he commands, his voice surprisingly loud and strong. “None of us is getting any younger.”

  Jim-Bob says, “Right,” slips in the mud and has to grab Maurice by the collar. Both men stumble but keep their feet, Jim-Bob mutters, “Sorry, Bubba; my fault,” before slip-sliding off to the stables.

  Ten minutes of silence and several cigarette butts thrown in the mud before they hear the hoof beats of half a dozen horses approaching. There’s a bustle of activity as jockeys arrange their mounts, snorting white steam in the cold wet air, then, with a wave of the trainer’s arm, they begin a mad scramble down the track. On the inside rail, ridden by the tiny Jim-Bob Binford, is a big chestnut named Prickly Pear.

  Maurice holds a silver stopwatch high, his thumb poised on the stem as the horses pound by. Several are slipping in the mud but Prickly Pear gallops steadily to reach the front of the pack. Leroy is yelling, “See! I told you!” over and over as they reach the turn and thunder back.

  Maurice slaps his thumb down on the watch as they go by, then stares at it intently. He shakes his head as the morning again gets quite, the herd drifting back to the comfort of the stables. A bird trills a tentative question.

  “I don’t believe it,” says Maurice. He gapes at the watch. “One minute-fifty-three point seven. In the mud. I’ve never seen a horse run the mile in less than two minutes twelve before. In the mud.” He seems dazed, like somebody’s hit him with a left hook.

  Leroy like a proud papa with newborn twins says, “Did I tell you? He can’t be beat.”

  They retire to an upstairs bar in the rear of the grandstands where an old man serves them coffee that steams in ceramic mugs. The tables are stacked with upended chairs and the only light is from the huge glass windows that overlooks the track. Maurice holds his cup in both hands and wheezes from the walk up five flights. Leroy doses his from a hip flask.

  “All right,” Maurice manages finally. “How do you do it?”

  Instead Leroy says, “You in?”

  “The hell kind of question is tha
t? Of course I’m in. I just want to know how.”

  Leroy gets quiet and leans forward, a sure tell that he’s about to lie. “I found this horse last year in a stable near Lexington. Nag can’t run a mile in less than two minutes-thirty and hasn’t won a race or placed in the money in three years. The owner decides to sell and I pick it up cheap as a gift for my daughter.” He pauses to take out his wallet, flip it open to a cute blonde kid, pony-tail and braces, smiling from atop a chestnut horse about ten times her size. “Wanna see?”

  “No, I don’t want to see,” snaps Maurice. “I want to hear.”

  “Sure, sure. Don‘t get snippy.” Leroy, muttering as he lights up a Pall-Mall, finally gets to the point. “We’re at home one day, it’s raining like now, and some damn fool lets out a backfire from a ’46 Desoto. Well, before I know it, the nag bolts, jumps a fence and takes off down this country lane runs by my place, goes down to Brimley about three miles.

  “I can’t believe what I’m seeing. That horse is running like Man O’ War himself, and me, I’m nobody’s fool so I decide right then to test him out. Seems that this horse can’t run on a dry track for spit, but put him in the mud and he’s a goin’ Jesse.”

  “He runs faster in the mud,” muses Maurice. His hands and face are starting to regain some color and his wheezing is down to the gasping of an overloaded locomotive but the light in his eyes is pure wonder. “I’ve never heard of such a thing.”

  “It’s rare,” agrees, Leroy, as solemnly as if he was telling the truth. “But I did some reading and it turns out there’s a bit of a legend about mudders. They don’t come along too often and when they do they’re not considered worth their training fees ‘cause, let’s face it, not all that many races are run in the rain.”

  “But,” says Maurice, getting it, “sometimes they run races in the rain.”

  “You catch on quick,” says Leroy, grinning and bobbing his head. “This horse has a long record of running slow so the odds are going to be long when we put him in a big race.”

  “Like the Grant Ford Memorial at Ak-Sar-Ben this Saturday,” says Maurice. “We bet a bundle on a long shot that runs away on a muddy track. We make a fortune.” He stops to nod appraisingly. “If,” he says, “It’s still raining Saturday.”

  “We can only hope.”

  “What happens next is that he’ll want to see it again. He won’t be taken in on just one run. We’re going to have to do the switch a couple more times before the mark is ready.”

  Kate’s sipping a dry martini, the rim of the glass tight against her lip as she smiles at him. The smile promises mortal delights such as man has never imagined and Leroy shivers, not solely from the cold. They’re sitting in the lodge style lobby of a hotel that caters to the higher class horse people who flock to the races every year, bringing in a lot of cash. Ak-Sar-Ben, the local track, is legendary for running races with big purses, sometime the largest between Chicago and the west coast. The fireplace is as big as a railroad tunnel and there’s a log in it that burns with the flames of Hell.

  Kate tips an olive with her tongue, holds it and her glance, then smiles. “A crooked stopwatch. Only you, Logan. It’s like you can turn back time.”

  “Who’d believe it,” agrees Leroy. “We swap his real watch with the copy that runs slow and suddenly a nag becomes a rocket. Simple, elegant…”

  “And so very twisty,” purrs Kate. They’ve been having the best time these past four years, ever since she made him pay for his betrayal in California. She hadn’t come back to him for more than month, betting he’d be all pins and needles crazy when she finally showed up in her little sports car, painted a deep maroon in case Barnes ever decided to get it back.

  Living alone without Logan, Kate realized something about herself; she didn’t like living alone without Logan. She didn’t like a lot of other things, like boredom and early mornings and real work, but mostly she missed the excitement of being with a man who consistently did big things. When he was setting up a con he was like a juggler, keeping six things in the air, nothing falling out, everything looking easy. She loves him, of course, but never as much as when he’s got his fingers in somebody’s pies. Now Kate toasts her good fortune by smiling wickedly, a look so apparent that he almost loses his train of thought.

  Almost. Kate know her charms, sees her effect on him daily, but also knows that when he’s on a con his attention is more focused on the plan than on her. So when he says, “Um…he’ll want another taste before he plunges. Then you’ll come in to take the money,” she drops the seduction for a question.

  “Why push? Don’t we have him already?”

  “We do,” agrees Leroy. “And we don’t. There’s something squirrelly about this guy that I can’t quite figure out.” He shakes his head, momentarily concerned. “It’s like I know him from somewhere…’

  “How’s that possible?” Kate asks. “I know everybody you know and I’ve never seen him before. You’re imagining things is all. You’ve got the heebie-jeebies.”

  “The heebie-jeebies,” Leroy laughs, loving her expressions. Kate can pull a smile from a lemon sucker, make a camel look high-spirited and charm the pants off a snake. He’s about to say something risqué when a thought hits him. “The guy,” he says, frowning.

  “What about him?”

  Leroy shakes his head, the image gone. “For a second there, I thought I had it, but no; never mind.”

  “Let it go, Logan. If it’s important it’ll come back to you.”

  “Sure, that must be right.”

  Turns out it isn’t.

  He meets Maurice at the track again, another cold rainy six AM bout with pneumonia. Jim-Bob does the watch swap, they watch the horses run, retreat to the bar and listen to Maurice go on about how he’s going to clean up on this horse. “He’s a can’t miss,” says Maurice for about the third time and Leroy’s getting into the spirit thinking, It’s never been this easy before. He worries about that for a couple of seconds then lets it go. Too much like looking a gift horse in the mouth.

  “What if it doesn’t rain this weekend?” asks Maurice, worried. Today he’s drinking coffee laced with bourbon to cut the morning chill while Leroy drinks his straight, the better to keep his wits. Not that he really needs to, this bird is already skinned and in the oven.

  They’re joined by Wilkey Smithers, who slips into a vacant chair like a ghost, startling Maurice into spilling his coffee.

  “K-Rist on a crutch!,” he gasps, sopping up the mess with a paper napkin covered with galloping horses under the legend The Big Tote Bar. “Don’t sneak up like that.”

  Wilkey is pretty close to being an albino; white hair, pale skin, colorless eyes. He dresses in dark clothes which make the effect more startling, like a zebra just walked in and ordered a drink.

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” he tells the waitress and she brings another mug, refills everyone and walks away. Maurice tips his flask, pouring some into the new cup, then his own. Wilkey sips, grimaces and smiles. “Now that warms the body.”

  He toasts, “Gentlemen; May all your horses be winners.” They touch mugs as he turns cold reptilian eyes on Leroy, like he knows him but doesn’t want to. Leroy doesn’t care; he’s not in this to be liked, and besides, he’s paying Wilkey two gees to play this part.

  The role is being a trainer who runs horses occasionally at Ak-Sar-Ben, a guy who’s pretty good at it if you count good as making a living more or less on the square. Today he’s more less than more.

  He says, “I hear you’ve been watching that nag of yours, Cutler.” Cutler is Leroy’s current nom de misguidance, a name he picked out of the Omaha white pages, coupling it with the exotic Rance because the odder the name the more people believe it. A con artist named Jones would starve in a week.

  “What’s it to you?” Leroy barks back, touchy. He’s a man with secrets says his body language, and he notes that Maurice is picking up on it. It sets them apart, makes them allies.

  “Nothing.�
� Wilkey makes a show of not caring. “But I see you want me to run him in the Grant Ford. That nag don’t stand a chance. You gotta know that.”

  “Again,” says Leroy. “What of it?”

  “Well, I’m thinking,” says Wilkie. “Why would smart fellows like you be interested in running a sure loser? And I thinks to myself, Wilkie, old son; maybe because Prickly Pear isn’t such a loser after all.” He grins wickedly at Maurice who is looking a little like the weather outside – gray and clammy.

  “Unless you’re betting him to lose.” His smile gets bigger, revealing a gold capped tooth. “But who’d bet on him to win? The horse hasn’t even placed in three years. So I guess you men are up to something.”

  He lets that sink in as he polishes off his doctored coffee, watching Maurice fight off what appears to be heart failure while Leroy turns to stone. The waitress comes by, waves the pot, picks up on the silence and does an about face like it’s contagious.

  “I want a piece,” says Wilkie, after it becomes plain that no one else is going to speak.

  “Of…of…,” sputters Maurice, “Of what?”

  “Whatever you’re doing.”

  The meeting goes downhill from there.

  Kate and Leroy on the top of the Ferris wheel, Ak-Sar-Ben fairgrounds, sticky with blue and pink cotton candy, pointing out the sights.

  “Look! You can see all the way to…over there,” says Kate, trying to put a spin on the extremely flat countryside. It’s still drizzling, which is good for the con, bad for the fair and worse for her hair, which is flying around her face like windblown fire. She has cotton candy in it from tucking it away from her eyes.

  “And a damned good over there it is,” agrees Leroy, eyes crinkled, good humor running wild. This has been the best day ever for them both. Worldly and cynical, they seldom get to spend time making up for the years lost in the depression, on the road or hustling for a living. When Kate suggests the fairgrounds, Leroy hardly even scoffs, instead getting so far into the spirit that he wins her a stuffed brown teddy bear at a booth on the Midway, dropping six bucks in dimes to get it.

  It sits between them in the swaying car. Kate reaches over it, squeezes his shoulder and smiles, a kid smile, nothing but today in it, nothing but joy. The wheel goes around and later Leroy tries to ring the bell on a hammer scam, failing to get the damn thing past Weakling on three tries. Walking away he grouses, “I know how they do that. Did you see how the guy leans against the wire? He makes the slide stiffen so the ball can’t go up. Then when the shill does it, he lets off and it’s easy.”

  Kate says, “Knock it off, Logan. Not everything’s a scam.”

  The wind rises and she doesn’t hear him say, “Yes, it is.”

  But despite the cold, the constant drizzle, the observations on human nature, the sickening food and high prices – ten cents for popcorn? A nickel for a soda pop? – they’re having the best time in a long run of very good times indeed when they get to the motel and Kate sees the telegram sticking out of the door jam. It’s yellow and folded into a white envelope that says Western Union, addressed to Leroy Logan, but she opens it anyway as he slips past her, moving fast toward the john.

  The telegram reads, “George in hospital with pneumonia. Urgent you send money.” Kate reads it with increasing dread, looks at the dark varnished bathroom door and drops her arm slowly to her side. The yellow paper flutters to the floor.

  She speaks softly so her voice is muffled through the door.

  “Logan? Who’s Adele Logan?”

  A whole lotta silence follows that question.

  He’s got a drink in one hand, a cigarette in the other and he’s sitting on the edge of the bed watching Kate. She’s wearing a big fuzzy sweater, the color of a faded orange that she seems to want to call tangerine, her hair is huge and her eyes are as wild as a mare in a stampede. She’s angry and restless, climbing the walls, back and forth, up and down and Leroy’s getting eyestrain trying not to watch.

  “Your wife?” she bellows, loud enough to break china if they had any. “You have a wife?” The room is only about twelve feet square with the bed taking up a good piece of it, so there isn’t a lot of room to pace. She hits her palm on the pine covered wall every other turn. It makes a cracking noise that makes Leroy flinch. “You didn’t think to mention a wife?”

  “It’s not what you think, Kate,” he says, though it probably is. Hard to explain to a long-time girlfriend that you have a wife stashed away in New Orleans. “I only married her ‘cause she was pregnant.”

  “What?!” He hadn’t thought it could get worse, but it does. “You’ve got a kid?”

  “George,” says Leroy, wondering if there’s a way to make this come out well. He can’t think of one, even if lying is involved, so he sticks to the truth hoping maybe it will surprise her. “See, Kate; it’s like this…”

  She eyes him the way she would a cockroach. “Please,” she says, “tell me.”

  “I met Adele before I met you, a couple of months before I left for the Navy. We had some good times and she got herself pregnant – with George – he’s about seven now, I think –” He sounds like he’s about to show some pictures but stops at her look.

  “Anyway, she got herself pregnant and I married her ‘cause that’s what you’re supposed to do, right?” He gives her this bright collie look, like he’s brought her a favorite chew toy - let’s play fetch! - but she stops him with a glare. He rushes on, quieter, guessing that this isn’t the time for endearing.

  “I married her and she had the boy and I send money every month because – again! – that’s what a stand-up guy’s supposed to do, support his family, and you know me, Kate; I’m a stand-up guy, but I’ve never been back there, Kate; honest, I’ve never been unfaithful to you.”

  She sees the light, like the headlight of the train that’s about to splatter your car all along the tracks. So this is where the money’s been going all this time. This is why we’re always flat broke; he’s sending money home to support a wife and son. And that thought, bad as it is, is replaced by this one: “You’ve never been back there?”

  “Never, Kate; I swear it.” He even crosses his hand in front of his heart, like he has one, the weasel. Then he adds, like it’s a little thing, hardly worth mentioning, “Except to see George a few times, his birthdays, maybe Christmas once or twice. But never with Adele. I haven’t been with Adele except that time in New Orleans when she got herself pregnant.”

  “She got herself pregnant?” Kate pounces on him, picking this point because the others border too close to panic. “She got herself pregnant? Like you had nothing to do with it? A virgin birth, is that what you’re telling me?”

  “Um…no.” Words are failing him like they’ve never done before as he desperately tries to find something – anything – that will save him. “I don’t mean…she didn’t…I mean she did! – and well, so did I, but just that one time, maybe a couple others, only that was before I met you, don’t you see? I did this before I met you.”

  “And that makes it right? You didn’t tell me all these years, you got a wife and kid and now I’m expected to…to…what? What the hell am I expected to do?”

  Leroy thinks, “Drop it?” but decides not to say so out loud.

  Kate seems to totter on the brink of fury – Leroy hopes so because then he’ll be able to talk again – and tears, which will shut him up like that damn leaky faucet there in the john. She stares at him and she’s crying while trying not to which makes him feel like that cockroach for real and he’s sorry now, not because the shoe’s about to crush him but because she’s hurting and he knows he’s maybe a little bit to blame.

  The silence lasts a very long while before she finally says, “How could you?” It’s a hurt voice, like a child betrayed by a parent, she doesn’t get it, how can this be happening? – and Leroy wants to get up and comfort her somehow when it all gets very loud in this small room.

  “You bastard,” she bellows. She grabs a c
ouple of pillows and throws them one at a time. “You unbelievable snake. You lousy two-timing son of a bitch. I can’t believe after all we’ve been through, you’d do something this low. I mean, I trusted you, Logan.”

  There’s more, all spoken while she prowls the room, grabbing up clothes from the floor – Kate’s never been a tidy person – cosmetics from the little bathroom, throwing them in a suitcase on the bed, nearly hitting him as she swings it with much fury and no regard for whether his head is actually in the way.

  Leroy watches this activity with little alarm, comforted by the routine. Kate’s packed up and left before and he knows it’s just a matter of time before she comes back. Sure, this one’s a little bigger than most but she’ll get over it.

  She pauses at the door to shake her head sadly at him, like maybe this time he’s gone to far, then she turns away, leaving the door open and the rain and cold in her place.

  He hears the car door slam and thinks again, she’ll be back.

  She always comes back.

  It’s a distracted and uncommonly morose Leroy Logan who, posing once again as Rance Cutler, two-bit racehorse owner, is out in the wind and wet. He’s on the rails with Maurice who looks like he’s taking to the chill air poorly this morning; all hacks and wheezes, coughing like he’s a three-pack a day smoker, which is odd since all he puffs on are those foul smelling cigars, not that Leroy cares, about the smoking or the guy himself. He’s got his own problems.

  Three days and no sign of Kate. He’s realizing that maybe this is a serious, not something to be solved with an earnest smile and a thick layer of lies Maybe, he’s thinking, they’re going to be apart even longer than the month she spent punishing him for the Bugatti incident. She didn’t take any money this time, for instance, and that can’t mean anything good. He figures he’s going to have to buy her something shiny and expensive and that means this situation right here.

  Besides, what do they say in show business? The con must go on, something like that, or break a leg, which Leroy is seriously considering doing if the damn windbag doesn’t shut up. Maurice has been on him all day about Wilkie blackmailing them, saying we ought to do this, Rance, we ought to do that. A track full of horses flies by and Maurice whispers something that really gets his attention.

  “We ought to kill him.”

  People cheer, losing tickets get torn up and thrown like confetti as Leroy thinks, Yeah? Kill him? and decides it’s a pretty good idea all in all. It comes to him full blown, the whole scene; him with a gun, Wilkie flattening against the wall, shaking his head, “No! Rance, don’t do it!” Something like that, and Leroy pulling the trigger, the gun loaded with blanks, Wilkie with a cackle-bladder of blood in one cheek, another squib in his shirt. Leroy fires twice, the sound loud in the room, Wilkie falls and the mark, terrified, runs away.

  Without the money.

  Perfect.

  So he says, “You can’t be serious. I won’t have anything to do with such a thing,” like he means it, morally outraged and all so Maurice can talk him into it later. He smiles to himself, feeling a little better for the first time since…well, since.

  Maybe a diamond necklace.

  A lot of details and a worried Leroy not that interested in them. He sits by the door in the uncomfortable straight-back chair, dealing out solitaire and drinking, waiting for the sound of her but all that happens is that he wakes up stiff with a hangover. He knows he’s not paying attention, but it’s hard keeping up, what with Maurice wheedling murder and Wilkie demanding, “Where’s he going to do it, Leroy? When’re you gonna kill me?” It’s like the guy can’t think of anything else.

  Leroy can’t think of anything else either. He’s blown it big with Kate this time and he realizes he should have told her the truth but honestly, how do you do that? Not that honesty is the major factor, if lying accomplishes the same end, but bottom line, how do you do it?

  Should he have brought it up when he was going into the Navy, about to board the same battleship he’d later sell? He didn’t see himself coming back at all so why admit to a pregnant wife? Maybe later, after the first big score…or when they were celebrating one night, out dancing; she loves dancing, always makes her frisky, he should have said something. “Hey, Kate,” he coulda said, “About getting married? I really can’t you know, ‘cause I already am.”

  Then duck while she throws the ashtray. Leroy has no illusions about Kate’s temper, but he just can’t get his head around the fact that this time she isn’t yelling. This time she’s just gone.

  He goes through the motions like a regular Joe with a real job, the guy who puts wheels on the new Fords as they come down the line at the Rouge in Detroit, all day long, just putting the wheels on Fords. He’s met some of those guys and they brag about their jobs. “Union benefits,” they tell him. “Good pay.” Leroy’d shoot himself with one of the air guns, he had to live like that.

  But he’s living like that now, just putting one foot in front of the other, making things happen without noticing how or why. The routine keeps him going and he never – not once – considers that maybe routine can get you killed.

  He meets with Maurice and agrees to the murder, polishes up the scam by entering a phony horse into a race it can’t win and forging time with a crooked stopwatch. Routine, all of it, and finally the day of the race arrives.

  Saturday late, the race is at six, and he’s going for the payoff at five. Maurice is bringing the money for the bet and the bribe, a suitcase full of cash totaling around fifty thousand. Four-fifty and it’s already getting dark under thick clouds fat with rain. Thunder booms over the lonesome howl of a locomotive out of the stockyards.

  Maurice slides into the room, nervous as a mouse in a cathouse, sweating and swallowing and generally looking like somebody about to do something really stupid.

  “You ready?” He asks.

  “Yes,” says Leroy. “But I’ve never done this kind of thing before, have you?”

  “Are you kidding me? Of course I’ve never done…I mean, I’d never…”

  “You’re about to.”

  “Not me!” Maurice looks panicky. “You’re going to do it; that’s what we agreed on. I don’t even want to be here.”

  “But you gotta.” Leroy needs him in the room when the fake blood gets spilled. Guy thinks he’s nervous now, wait until he sees the dead body. The idea’s almost enough to give Leroy the grins.

  There’s a rap on the door, shave-and-a-haircut, and Leroy nods. He opens the door and Wilkie strolls in as cocky as a bantam rooster, not half as colorful. He’s chosen to wear a white suit for his performance so the blood will look especially good. “Contrast,” he explained to Leroy a couple hours ago at a bar. “It’s gonna look swell.”

  He grins when he sees the case, then frowns when he sees the gun in Leroy’s hand, all part of the show.

  “Hey, what gives?” He says, dramatic, maybe overacting a little. Leroy points the pistol and pulls the trigger, once, twice, like they practiced. One up for the cackle-bladder in the mouth, one at the chest for the bloody squib. Two loud bangs – expected – and Wilkie’s eyes go wide with shock. Leroy’s too, as he looks at the gun, then at the albino who’s sliding down the wall, leaving a thick track of real blood, smearing the big green hibiscus flowers on the wallpaper.

  Wilkie says, “What?” in choked voice.

  Leroy says, “What?” in shock.

  Maurice says, “I’ll take that,” and grabs the pistol, wrapping it in a white handkerchief, smiling wickedly.

  Wilkie sinks to the floor and Leroy drops to his knees to hold him, watching the pale man’s breath get ragged, wheeze a couple of times then stop. He feels the body spasm until all that’s left is a bewildered look and then…nothing.

  Leroy lets go and stands up. He’s got Wilkie’s blood on his hands and he yells, “What the HELL?”

  Maurice points a gun at Leroy – a different gun, Leroy’s being in the pocket of his coat. He looks indecently pleased, like
a cat when the entire canary boat comes in. He says, “Maurice? You stupid prick; you still don’t know me?”

  Leroy shakes his head, lightheaded and dazed, as if somebody’s been sucking the air out of the room. “Know you –?”

  Maurice takes of the snap-brim hat, making a show of it, unmasking himself. “Maybe you know me better by my real name. Walker P. Edens?” His tone is nasty and full of himself. “Ring any bells?”

  “Edens?” Leroy stares, openmouthed. The Colonel? Is it possible? He pictures the man he swindled back in San Francisco seven years ago but can’t match this skinny old consumptive with the fat, pompous windbag con artist he knew.

  Then the man grins and Leroy sees it. The same smug look of self-satisfaction he’d seen when the bird tried to muscle in on Leroy’s scam. The Colonel.

  Who’s laughing. “You’re surprised? Good. You thought you were scamming me, but I was really scamming you.” He digs in his pocket like he’s scratching for fleas, hauls out a tiny object and throws it to Leroy who catches it. The stopwatch.

  Things are moving too quickly to keep up. One moment he’s about to shoot his friend in an innocent scam; the next he’s a murderer and the mark he’s fleecing turns out to be a revenge crazed guy he hasn’t even given a thought to since he last saw him.

  He says again, “What?”

  The Colonel says, “I spent five years in a Federal prison because of you, Logan. Yes, I know your name. I know everything about you. I’ve done nothing but search for you since I got out.”

  Hearing his last name isn’t the same as when Kate says it. There’s no love here, for one thing. There’s a gun pointed at his stomach for another. He thinks, desperate and starting to sweat, that maybe something will happen, an earthquake maybe, or a tornado; because he doesn’t see any other way this is going to turn out right.

  “After you cheated me -” The Colonel stops Leroy from correcting him – “I vowed to get even. I searched everywhere, asking people, getting a hint here and there, always too little, too late. I heard you pulled a scam in California. I tracked down Limehouse and those other guys; even threatened them, but they wouldn’t give you up. I don’t know what it is about you, Logan, but people seem to like you, whatever it is.

  “Me, I know better. I see you for the small time grifter you’ll always be. You think you’re world class, but you’re not. And do you know why?”

  Leroy, not really wanting to know why – it doesn’t seem to matter at this point – shrugs. “Do tell.” Maybe the jerk will die from cancer before he can pull the trigger.

  “Because I outsmarted you. That’s right; the great Leroy Logan, taken out by another con man. You never even saw me coming, did you?”

  “Well…no.” The body against the wall, the red blood on the white suit, the accusing look in those pales eyes, open forever now, is giving Leroy the shakes. He’s hardly hearing the Colonel gloat.

  “I’d been onto you for a couple of months when I realized you were setting up a scam. You thought I didn’t know about the watch – which, I’ll give you, is a pretty good con.” He shakes his head as if regretting he’s said that.

  “You set the jockey to swap the watch. Back and forth, the real watch for everyday, keeping great time; the phony for when your horse runs. Clever. What you didn’t know is I paid Wilkie off to play against you. He’s been working for me every damn day.”

  Wilkie, you little weasel. If you weren’t already dead…Leroy searches the room, more worried by the second. Is there a way out of this?

  The Colonel gestures at the dead man. “He’s been mine since you brought him in. Cost me a bundle, didn’t he? Know how much it costs to betray you, Logan?”

  Again the feeling he doesn’t want to know. “How much?” He asks, as if he doesn’t care. Maybe charge the gun? No; that doesn’t sound good.

  “Ten thousand dollars,” says the Colonel and Leroy glances over at Carmine Buscimi –that being Wilkie’s real name - impressed. He’s called ‘Snowy Deuce’ because of the albino thing and because he drives a ’32 Ford coupe back in LaJolla, blue with red leather and a cue ball shift. He has – had - a wife named Mollie and a pair of kids, modest house near the beach, likes to surf. Leroy thinks, ten big ones; not a bad score, Snowy. Hell, I might have turned myself, that kind of cash. Sorry, man; I didn’t mean to kill you.

  This is coming to an end too damn quick. “You’re finished, Logan. No way you’re walking away from this. No words are going to save you.”

  “So shoot me, already.” Pure bravado; Leroy’s never been so scared in his life, not even when the Japs shelled the Mississippi near Guadalcanal.

  “Shoot you?” The Colonel laughs. “You kidding? I got something better. I’m going to keep you here until I hear sirens – somebody’s got to be calling the cops about those gun shots, don’t you think? But just in case they didn’t –” He points the pistol at the ceiling and fires it three times. “That ought to bring them.”

  Leroy damn near jumps under the bed when the gun goes off and now he’s really sweating. He has no illusions about what will happen when the cops find him in a motel room with a body covered in blood. Then there’s the steadily growing horror that he actually did just kill a man. Didn’t mean to, but still.

  “I’ll leave the gun you shot this guy with – empty, of course – when I hear the sirens…”

  As if on cue they hear the sirens.

  “Oh, and one more thing,” says the Colonel and Leroy groans. He hates ‘one more thing.’

  “That woman you run around with. The redhead. Where is she?”

  “What redhead?”

  “Don’t insult me. Katherine Mulrooney. “Fast Kate.” Like I said, Logan; I know everything about you.”

  “Not everything, you jerk.” May as well do one good thing; keep Kate out of this. Just for a second he’s glad she’s gone. “Kate left me last week. Found out I was married.”

  “She didn’t know? Damn; I would have used that.” The Colonel mulls that one, annoyed, like he’s missed an opportunity. “Well, never mind. Sending you to prison will be revenge enough. It is, after all, what you did to me.” He pulls the hanky-wrapped pistol from his pocket and tosses it on the bed. The damn sirens are getting louder.

  Whee-Ooo –Whee-Ooo -Whee-Ooo.

  He opens the door and it sounds like hounds baying for someone to eat. Leroy shivers, knowing he’s the rabbit they’re after while the Colonel steps outside. He turns back to give Leroy one last gloating sneer.

  “You are screwed; totally, completely, screwed. Goodbye, Logan.” He pauses a moment, considering, then adds, “To keep you from running…”

  And shoots Leroy in the foot.

  Kate Mulrooney, not quite twenty-three years old, walks through the door of the crappy motel room like she’s eighty. The neon sign blinks on and off – Rooms! Showers! Radio! – green and red like Christmas on skid row as Kate clicks on the overhead. Dim light fills the room and she pauses on the threshold, neither in nor out, staying or going, thinking, What am I doing here?

  She sees the chair by the sink, the empty Jim Beam bottle, the ashtray overflowing and she imagines what it’s been like for him. For her it’s been a nightmare; sleepless nights pounding a pillow, crying too much. She’s fought off running back to him a hundred times and told him to go screw another hundred. She’s argued with him and cursed him and pictured Adele Logan as a lot of women, from Betty Grable to Vivien Leigh, tight skirts and come-hither smiles and she wants to forgive Logan but she wants to hurt him, too.

  Now she takes a step, then another and she’s in the room.

  Leroy’s in the room.

  With an empty gun.

  Police wailing away outside.

  Left foot bleeding, hurts like the blazes.

  And a dead body, let’s not forget that.

  He does a rapid eyeball around and figures it again; no way out. His shoe’s filling with blood and he’s sagging with the shock; feels like he’s lost a toe dow
n there. His brain’s doing Don’t panic, don’t panic…do not panic!

  He breathes, in and out, calm down, and thinks; so, what are we gonna do? What they don’t expect; run toward the trouble.

  He strips off the blood-stained coat, shoves it under the bed. He tosses the gun under there, too, after rubbing it for prints with the hanky. Grabs a handful of toilet paper and stuffs it into his shoe – makes him want to scream, that – and wipes off the blood. He flushes the paper, takes two quick steps to the door then stops. The suitcase full of money; the Colonel forgot it.

  Crap! He grabs the grip, shoves it through the bathroom window and runs – ouch – back to the door.

  He throws it open and starts shouting. “POLICE! POLICE! HELP!” Now he’s jumping up and down – ouch! –waving like a man who’s seen a ghost, letting the panic flood into him, make it work for him.

  Three squad cars screech to a halt in a little circle of glaring white lights, flashing reds and blues and a bunch of big guys with guns – really big guys, none of them looking friendly – are yelling at him. Leroy’s screaming like a madman, “There’s a dead guy in there!” Pointing to the door of room one-fourteen. “In there! A dead guy!”

  The cops elbow past him, all of them, he can’t imagine how they’re going to fit, and he hightails it away from the Vista-View Motor Lodge as fast as he can.

  A quick trip around back before the cops can sort out what’s happening out front, he grabs the brown case and hits the alley, limping through weeds and garbage and mud until he gets to the street. Left turn, away from all the commotion, hugging the back streets until he is far away. His room is that way.

  Step limp, step, limp, the suitcase bangs against his leg and the pain is awful. He’d like to throw it away, thinks, are you kidding? Fifty Gees is in this thing. He’s feeling about as bad as he ever has in his whole life, what with killing his friend. Never mind that Snowy betrayed him, Leroy would have done that himself, but he’s dead and Leroy killed him.

  Leroy’s always disliked guns, figuring a good con is an elegant thing, like being a salesman, sort of; convincing people they really needed whatever was being sold. In his case, a bill of goods, but either way, folks paid money, nobody got hurt, and especially, no one got shot.

  Until now. The damned Colonel, Leroy curses. Where’d he come from? An aggrieved sense of self-pity swells over him and he limps along, as pitiful as a hound baying at the moon.

  The key on the big plastic ring (“If found, please return to the Hillside Motel,”) opens the lock and Leroy steps into the room, wanting a drink and a smoke and…

  “Kate?” he says, flabbergasted.

  Her second suitcase is on the bed, half-full, nylons slopping over the edge like snake skins. A white slip is folded carefully next to a pile of sweaters. Kate herself is caught in mid-fold, eyes as wide as a deer on the side of the road. She says, “Leroy,” and his heart shatters.

  He can feel it inside his chest, like somebody’s just reached inside and squeezed. There’s a roaring in his ears and he can’t seem to find any air because he know what’s coming. “Leroy,” she said; not “Logan.”

  He says, “I shot,” and she says, “I gotta be gone,” and he says, “You gotta be gone?” because it’s the important part, and she says, “You shot who?”

  “Never mind.” He gestures. “What’s all this?”

  Kate inhales a long shuddery breath and raises an arm to touch him, then lets it fall away like it weighs too much. “You killed us,” she says. “You just…killed us.”

  He says, “Kate –”

  “You’re married. I thought I could get over it… I thought…it didn’t matter, but it does.”

  “It doesn’t have to.”

  “It does.” She drops the sweater - tangerine - into the case. “You cheated on me.”

  “I never did, Kate. I married her before I met you.” Desperate, he tries to explain again. “I had to marry her; she was pregnant. A man’s…”

  “…Gotta do, right; I got that.”

  “Then what?” He’s never cried before, not even when he hit the road at twelve and slept in a drainage ditch under County Road Seven listening to things grunt and slither in the dark. But he’s blinking back tears now.

  “It’s the one damn noble thing I’ve ever done in my whole life, Kate. And you’re leaving me for it? It don’t make no sense.”

  For a long moment she stands there and he takes it as meaning she’s reconsidering, but she lets her shoulders fall and so much for that. “It’s no use. We can’t get past this.”

  He says, “What are you going to do?” instead of “You’re killing me,” but she hears it anyway and winces. The tears are flowing and she doesn’t even try to wipe them away.

  “I’m quitting. I’m leaving the life and going somewhere else. Someplace where the world makes more sense and the people aren’t cons.”

  “Over the rainbow?” He asks and they both cringe at the reminder of her favorite movie, follow the yellow brick road; it’ll take you to your heart’s desire. Only not this time.

  “You’re going straight?” He’s almost as shocked at this as everything else. “Kate, you can’t.”

  But she closes the case, picks it up and touches his cheek, feeling the wetness on her palm. “I am.”

  “But you can’t,” he pleads. Just for a moment he considers telling her. I killed a man tonight, Kate. I almost got caught. I messed up and I feel awful and I’ve been shot. You can’t leave me like this.

  He doesn’t say it and he doesn’t know why. Certainly Leroy Logan the con artist would have, but he doesn’t seem to be here right now. Kate slips around his skinny shoulders and walks out the door. He closes his eyes and hears her high heels clacking on the worn concrete and when he can’t hear anymore he opens them and she’s gone.

  He sets down the suitcase full of money, gently closes the door and limps to the chair by the bathroom. Sitting down he feels the blood pumping through his heart and is mildly surprised that it’s still beating.

  He slips off his shoe – ouch – and gently peels away the toilet paper, wadded and bloody. His little toe is gone, shot off by that damned addle-minded Colonel. Seeing it, he has half a mind to go after him but he knows he never will. Taking fifty thousand dollars is pay back enough.

  He thinks, fifty thousand dollars…and Jim Beam whiskey is a buck-seventy a bottle. That’s…his fourth grade math fails him but he knows it’s enough to let him stay drunk for a very long time.

  Best to start now. He knocks the case over and leans way down to click the snaps. He opens the lid and looks down at one more image that will stay with him forever.

  The case is full of shredded paper.

  End of Chapter Three